Time After Time (6 page)

Then the door opening.
Then the door slamming.

And there he was, face to
face with Liz for the second time that day, except, of course, that
now she looked pretty.

"Mr. — Mr. Eastman," she
said piteously. "This may seem like a trivial question ... but I
wanted to know ... chocolate cake?" she asked in a faltering voice.
"Or white?"

Still flushed with fury,
he stared blankly at her for a moment. "The question's not only
trivial," he growled at last. "It's goddamned stupid!"

He brushed past her on his
way out, leaving Liz — for the second time that day —
agape.

"He doesn't mean that,
dear," said Netta apologetically, wringing her hands. "Truly. I've
never seen him this angry. He would
never
talk to someone like
that."

"I see," said Liz, shaking
with indignation. "Then I guess we both imagined it!"

"I mean, he's always a
perfect gentleman," Netta said.

"With gentle ladies, you
mean," said Liz grimly. He'd looked at
her
...
answered
her
...
stormed past
her,
as if she were some low-life
panhandler.

"I mean with
everyone,"
his
housekeeper insisted. "But Mr. Eastman's been under tremendous
strain. You simply can't imagine," she said, her voice trailing
off. She was shaking her head and looked exactly the way a
housekeeper in a Gothic mansion should look: distressed, old, and
loyal to the bone.

But Liz was unmoved. As
far as she was concerned, Netta's master was ruder than either
chimes
or
rap
music. "Well!" she said crisply, tapping her foot on the marble
floor. "Now that I'm here: would you like to show me where the
event is going to be held?"

Netta furrowed her brow
with uncertainty and studied the closed doors. "Yes," she said,
suddenly making up her mind. "Why not?"

She knocked once on one of
the paneled doors and then opened it. Liz followed her into what
was obviously East Gate's Great Room, a soaring affair of dark and
gleaming elegance. From the parquet floor and exposed timbers to
the deeply silled windows topped by panels of stained glass,
everything about the room suggested excessive wealth and power.
Nothing about it was timid or subtle. Nothing about it was even
remotely feminine. It was a statement of pure male
dominance.

The seating was grouped
into several arrangements of sofas and chairs, most of them covered
in dark, rich tapestries, each grouping with its own exquisite
Persian rug. One armchair stood out from the rest. It was the only
one in the room made of tufted leather, with big rolled arms.
Obviously it was an old favorite, worn soft by generations. In that
chair, which was positioned in front of a massive fireplace heaped
with ashes, sprawled an older, thinner, and altogether calmer
version of Jack Eastman.

He'd been deep in thought
when they walked in. He, too, seemed angry, although there was no
hint of a scowl on the etched features of his still-handsome face.
Liz decided, on the spot, that
this
man would never permit himself to scowl: it would
take too much energy.

When he realized that
Netta had someone with her, he stood up from the leather armchair
and said pleasantly, "I beg your pardon."

He looked expectantly at
Liz. He had the same blue gaze as Jack Eastman — and yet not the
same at all. There was something about the way he looked at her.
There was no doubt about it: he was taking her in, from her head to
her toes. Liz was glad, after all, that she was
well-dressed.

"This is Mrs. Coppersmith,
Mr. Eastman. Mrs. Coppersmith is planning the — oh, what is it?
The
event,"
she
said.

"Ah. Good. Has Jack
supplied you with a guest list?"

Liz shook her
head.

He turned to Netta. "Round
up the usual suspects for her, then, would you, Netta? Make sure
you include children. We must have some somewhere."

He took up his wineglass
and raised it to them in an amiable toast. "Well. I'll leave you to
it, then," he said, and he left.

Netta sighed and relaxed
visibly; it was obvious that she had no heart for confrontations
such as the one the two women had just overheard. She tweaked the
belt on the simple brown dress she wore, pushed her plastic-rimmed
glasses back on her nose, and adjusted the set of her broad
shoulders into normal-business mode.

"All right, then. The
party will be in this room. The ballroom is far too big," she
added, "and besides, it's pretty much unfurnished. I don't know if
you've planned a menu yet, dear, but Mr. Eastman — Jack, that is —
doesn't want red wine served, or anything with barbecue sauce or
ketchup, because of the rugs. We'll roll up the one in the corner
and have a couple of children's tables there. The adults will eat
buffet-style."

"That's fine. Do you have
trays, nesting tables, that kind of thing?" asked Liz. When Netta
frowned, Liz said, "No problem — I'll bring them."

"We don't entertain much
anymore," Netta explained. And then she added with a petulant sigh,
"I hope the boy's springing for more than rolled baloney slices and
olives on toothpicks."

The boy, as Netta termed
him, was hardly springing for
that.
"Don't worry about a thing," said Liz
reassuringly. "I guarantee that it'll be a birthday everyone
remembers. I'll call when I get a little farther along with the
plans."

She took one last look
around the handsome room with its priceless rugs and rare antiques.
The Eastmans could easily entertain royalty here, but apparently
they chose not to. Liz's parents, on the other hand, didn't have
room to swing a cat, and yet they were always entertaining someone
or other in their chips-and-beer fashion.

Ah, well,
Liz thought.
F. Scott
Fitzgerald was right. The rich
are
different from the rest of us.

****

Three quick right turns
brought Liz spiraling back to her tiny cottage on its dead-end
street. It looked smaller now than ever, but Liz didn't mind:
Unlike East Gate, it made her feel welcome.

Inside the house she
yoo-hooed for her daughter.

"In the kitchen, Mommy!"
yelled Susy cheerfully.

Ah, good; all
better,
Liz decided as she strode the
half-dozen steps down the opened-out hall to the
kitchen.

Susy looked up from her
coloring books with her usual happy grin. Victoria, who was sitting
at the table opposite the child with her back to the heavenly view
of East Gate, was completely immersed in a letter she was reading.
Almost as an afterthought Liz noticed that the table was covered
with letters — some in packets, some out of their envelopes, the
rest scattered on the floor like snowdrops across a lawn in
March.

"We cleaned up your whole
mess," said Susy proudly. "You hardly can tell anything, except for
the hole in the ceiling."

"Victoria!" said Liz. She
understood at last where all the letters were from. "You brought
down the
trunk?"

Victoria tried to tear
herself away from the letter: her head moved in the direction of
Liz's voice, but her eyes stayed glued to the heavy linen
stationery. At last, having finished, she looked up.
"What?"

"Are those from the
attic?" asked Liz in an annoyed voice.

"Of course they are," said
Victoria, surprised at her tone. "Susy, go out and play with Toby.
I just saw him stalking some birds again. Make him
stop."

Susy rolled her big brown
eyes melodramatically and said, "You weren't even looking. You just
want to talk to Mommy by yourself." But she slid down from her
chair anyway and ran out to the backyard to amuse
herself.

Victoria held out the
letter for Liz. "Look at this," she said in a hushed, almost
awestruck voice. The skin of her face, under its scattering of
freckles, was pale, almost translucent.
"Look
at this."

Liz took the sheet from
Victoria and scanned it. "All right," she said. "I'm looking. So
what?" But she wasn't looking at all; she was too upset that
Victoria had beat her to the letters. Surprised by the petulance in
her own voice, Liz observed, "It's dated July 1881."

"Exactly. Over a hundred
years ago. Now look at the signature."

Liz turned the letter
over. "What incredibly flamboyant handwriting," she said, still
feeling misused. "It's as bad as yours."

"Exactly!"
said Victoria, her beautiful green eyes dancing
with triumph. "Read it!"

"Hmph. It looks like
Victoria something."

"Victoria St.
Onge,"
said Victoria, flipping her long
red hair over her shoulders. She scooped up a handful of letters
and held them up to Liz as if they were gold nuggets. "These are
almost all from her. It's beyond coincidence," she said in a low,
breathy voice.

"What? That you're both
named Victoria?"

"More than that, Liz!" her
friend insisted. "Listen to me. I know you think I tend toward
flakiness, but just listen. She
lived in
this house.
Victoria St. Onge lived in the
house that
I
tracked down for you. Didn't I track it down? We both agreed
I did," she insisted almost feverishly.

She began a wild shuffle
through the letters, looking for one particular one. "Not only
that, but — okay, you tell me —
how
have I decorated my house? In what
scheme?"

"You mean, in high
Victorian style?" asked Liz, baffled.

Victoria slammed a fist on
the table like an auctioneer. "Right again!
This
Victoria," she said, tapping
the letters with her forefinger, "was
my
age
during the high Victorian
period."

"I'll bet lots of people
your age named Victoria have done up their houses in Victorian
style. So what?"

"My God," whispered
Victoria. "1 can't believe you don't get it. What
motif"
she said slowly,
as if Liz were in the final round of the College Bowl, "what
motif
have I featured in
every room of my house — in my bedding — even in my
bathrobe?"

"What? Your thing about
angels?"

"How's your French?"
whispered Victoria, more to herself than to Liz.
"Ange
or 'Onge'? Close
enough, don't you think?"

It was, at last, beginning
to dawn on Liz that her friend was serious. "Victoria," she said
gently, "Everyone's into angels nowadays.
I
have an angel."

"I gave it to
you!"

"Whatever!" Liz snapped.
Victoria was fragile; her entire identity was a piecemeal,
makeshift affair. Liz knew it and respected the fact — and still
lost her cool. "Are you
nuts?
You think, what? That you're a reincarnation of
this Victoria St. Onge?"

"Who else can I be?"
Victoria asked ingenuously. "I don't know who I am. I have amnesia.
In the hospital I pluck a name out of the blue — Victoria. I buy a
Victorian house, do it up as a period piece, fill it up with all
kinds of angels, then I find
you
a house, then
you
find the trunk, then
I
happen to haul down some letters
.... My God." She smiled a truly angelic smile, as if she'd fallen
off a cliff and landed unhurt on a cloud.

"Who else," she repeated
as a tear rolled out,
"can
I be?"

Liz, worried now, laid the
letter she was holding on the table, then bent over behind her
friend and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "You can be
anything you want to be, kiddo. Haven't you always told me
that?"

Victoria turned and
pressed her cheek to Liz's, then sat her friend down in the chair
alongside. "There are little things as well — like the fact that
she rinsed her hair red with some kind of tea and henna mix — and
the fact that she liked Johann Strauss. Didn't I just buy the
complete collection of his waltzes on compact disc? You were with
me at the Music Box, accusing me of being an impulse
buyer."

She lifted a packet of
still-bound letters and pressed it to her breast. "Don't you see,
Liz?" she asked in a plaintive voice. "Isn't it as obvious to you
as it is to me? Judy Maroney
died
in that car accident, along with her husband and
two children. And Victoria St. Onge stepped into her body and
started it up again. It explains the amnesia. It explains so many
things."

"But why?" Liz asked,
despite herself. "Why would this Victoria St. Onge do
that?"

Victoria lifted her
shoulders in a smiling, forlorn shrug. "I don't know. I'm hoping I
find the answer in these letters."